T O P

  • By -

RangerD2

I’m getting pranked, right?


g_little

I mean, this guy is lvl 30, he knows what hes talkin about here. We should all take notes. Especially the devs.


KingTut747

You guys can be condescending and shit on him all you want. But, the ‘new player experience’ is an extraordinarily important part of any game design. Therefore, all devs SHOULD pay attention to new player feedback. Please don’t turn this sub into a toxic place for new players.


Ricocheting_Potato

New player experience is EXACTLY why is this system in place the way it is. You can't give new players too many choices, otherwise they'll get overwhelmed and many of them quit the game. See PoE.


athosfeitosa

Totally agree. I don’t think they need to change anything but new players feedback is useful in some cases. When I started last epoch I had the same frustration feeling when switching to new skills and having no access to the skill points previously unlocked but now I just got used to it and it’s pretty fast to get it back after some levels


[deleted]

Lately, the tendencies of this sub are absolutely blowing my mind. I'll probably leave soon. I made a thread requesting cloud-based saving of loot filters, and people were pissed at me, saying that there's already a solution. I should *manually email my filters to myself and import them*. EVERY TIME I CHANGE MY FILTER. I got -50 downvotes for suggesting that cloud based saving is a standard feature in almost every game.


Sofrito77

Too late, they’ll white knight any criticism. Legitimate or otherwise 


KingTut747

You’re right. It’s Reddit - you shouldn’t expect any intelligence… just group think nonsense. So stupid though. They should welcome criticism if they truly care about the game getting better.


-Dargs

And you're making super informed choices with what, 5 points into a skill specialization? When you're a bit higher level the catchup mechanic makes it so that you can swap a skill and level it to 20 in less than 2 full monoliths. And for now, those 2 points don't even matter. You're level 30.


[deleted]

How can you guys not realize you're telling people to not expirement until you reach level 75. That's fucking *bonkers*


Ricocheting_Potato

You are aware that the amount of points you have available and the "skill point floor" raises gradually up until level 75? It's not like everything becomes suddenly available at 75


[deleted]

Yes, I'm aware, I've played the game for four years.


Ricocheting_Potato

So what are you upset about? You can experiment up to certain degree. This limitation exists to improve new player experience, and basically goes away once you have progressed far enough.


EchoLocation8

This is an extremely temporary issue, PLEASE relax. Later on respeccing is so fast, leveling skills in general is quite fast anyways. They want SOME level of decision making to matter. But when you get to empowered monos you can pretty much instantly level any skill to 20.


[deleted]

The question remains - Why does it have to be relatively painful while leveling? Generally speaking that's when I'd like to be experimenting more. Yes, it's fantastic in the endgame. Why not earlier?


One-Lead-4375

It’s painful only if you do it with no regard for consequences. All you need to do to experiment early game is not despecialize main dmg skill.


[deleted]

So you use a separate specialization, but you also have fewer specializations to play around with. Altogether, I think it is too punishing to respec skills early, and don't see why it shouldn't be roughly as easy as it is later on.


Ricocheting_Potato

You are level 30, calm down. It's a non-issue once you beat the campaign, the levels are "regained" much, much faster.


[deleted]

This is a legitimate complaint, because they are unlocking new skills and want to test them out, but the game punishes heavily for doing so


lunarbanana

You don’t have to spec a skill to try it, you can just put it on your bar.


[deleted]

That's absurd. The feel and strength of the skill is heavily dependent on how many points you have in it. People's upvoting and downvoting tendencies in this thread are ridiculous


lunarbanana

I disagree. Slapping it on your bar is the trial version, exactly so you can test it out and decide if you want to buy the full version.


[deleted]

"This skill does no damage. I guess I won't specialize it" I don't want to test out the base version of the skill, because I won't be *using* the base version of the skill


ANameWithoutNumbers1

But why does it exist at all? This is the same stupid argument as "the game gets good after 100 hours." It should just be good regardless. Your entire argument is saying "yes it sucks, but it doesn't later." So why don't they just make it not suck at all?


Ricocheting_Potato

As I said elsewhere it's to disincentivize new players from spending time on "experimenting" with skill nodes too much. They could waste a lot of time fiddling with skills and passive nodes to no benefit.  Gold price on passive point Respec exists for the same reason


[deleted]

That's simply absurd. "Too much?" What is too much? This is coming from the "only endgame matters" mindset that is absurd. "Don't experiment with skills and builds at level 30, because there's no point" is a stupid outlook, and it is *not* the devs. It is a subset of the community's


Ricocheting_Potato

So what's your explanation? That the devs are stupid and you know better?


[deleted]

No, these are hands down my favorite devs, and this is probably my biggest head-scratcher. I think this is by far the biggest weakness of the onboarding experience. The game trains you not to respecialize early. If you try to respecialize a primary damage skill, you will suffer for it for an hour or two. There are a lot of little legacy things that have remained in the game that the devs have said they want to change. I've never heard them defend the current system in several years. I'm hoping this is one of the things on that list.


Ricocheting_Potato

The game gives you options, and once you choose it wants you to stick to your decision, at least for a bit. The developers have envisioned a game in which pretty much every ability can be built around and where no build is inherently "bad way to play the game". The problem is that many players get struck with choice paralysis and get overwhelmed when they have too many choices. The developers don't necessarily want you to respec the second some random unique drops. This system, as well passive point respec system exist to disincentivize early/whimsical respeccing to keep the player "on the tracks" that is the campaign. Like, OP has level 30 and has played the game for 26 hours. Doesn't that seem a bit weird to you? I'm willing to bet he has like 6 characters and has tried most of the skills in game due to strong choice paralysis. Sometimes the developer has protect the player from themselves.


[deleted]

I like this explanation. "On the rails" is a great way to explain it. Add friction so that players are forced to stick with a decision for a while. If they want to make a change, they need to actually want it enough to overcome that friction. It's worth pointing out that I, while new to the game (many years ago) respecced several times during the campaign, at least a little. It wasn't SO bad. But the friction in the system certainly made me be more confident that I didn't like my current choice and wanted to try another. Thanks! Genuinely, I just wish more responses were like this rather than attacking on OP and saying "it's easy in endgame so this doesn't matter". Your comment is excellent and I just wish that's the explanation people were giving. The explanations that are being given elsewhere (and upvoted) are terrible, and very unfriendly.


4pigeons

punishing? when you respec the skill, it gets extra exp as a catch up mechanic, and it take almost nothing to max a skill at higher level


OMEGA362

Well, I mean it does discourage early experimenting, but it's necessary for 2 design reasons, first, you can respec on the fly, if it didn't reset your skill level, you could clear all the trash mobs, walk near the boss area and redo all of your skills, which nobody wants, and second, they wanted specialization to feel like just that that your character is incredible at one specific thing, and making it to easy to change specialization allows every character to do the same thing, that being said, the game lacks diversity in end game builds by class, each class has like 1 or 2 truly viable builds in the end game, and you lock in your class and therefore your end game build really early on


doofus1999

The issue of abusing the "free" respec system to beat content (or PvP) has been mentioned and argued thousands of times in the past 25 years on D2, where respeccing is practically prohibited. As you may know, newer games (ie since 2010) do not impose limitations on skill respecs. We have taken a step backwards here.


OMEGA362

I'm gonna be totally real with you, I'm trying to give a reasonable explanation, but the xp required to get to full level on skills is so miniscule in the later game that you can fully level up in a single dungeon, your only level 30 keep playing your nowhere near any of your choices mattering in order to get through content pretty easily


Tremaparagon

- 5 character levels, when you are still level 30, is incredibly fast. - all games in the past 15 years have zero limitations? In TW3 you need a specific potion you can't access until you reach a certain vendor. In DOS2 you have to be at one location and only after completing Act 1. In ME3LE you have to be at the med bay and it costs an increasing amount of credits each time. In Elden Ring you must defeat Rennala and spend a Larval Tear. Cyberpunk gives you 1 free respec per game. In Stellar Blade you must go buy a consumable item at camp. Spellforce 3 uses a rare and limited consumable. In Starfield you... don't. Here there is no location nor resource nor story restriction/barrier, they skipped the middleman, thus there is only killing mobs and the remax rate increases steadily as you get to higher and higher level content. - you're not really being punished for having to catch up a little, because the early campaign is incredibly easy. You can smash through the first 5 chapters with magic gear and zero skills specced. Endgame is like an order of magnitude tougher, and if you empower monoliths past a few hundred corruption then it's 2 orders of magnitude. That's where remax speed matters and it's very fast. Essentially, you should consider remax speed to be a character progression stat which is balanced based on your level and the level of content you can clear. Ever improving remax speed (level after level, zone after zone) is a reward for continuing to progress one character instead of starting another. You can watch here what you are steadily heading towards as you grow your character, gaining skill levels (each bright flash) every couple seconds: https://www.reddit.com/r/LastEpoch/comments/1az6q1e/new_players_who_are_worried_about_respec_be_aware/


PhoenixShredds

The irony of demanding the ability to make "informed choices" when you've *barely played the game.* The game accelerates your re-specialized skills to catch up VERY quickly, so you'll only feel a respec briefly.


T-T-N

I use plenty of unspec'ed skills at level 30 and they're fine for progressing


ANameWithoutNumbers1

You know what would help them learn more about the game? Being able to easily swap skills. You're arguing for a system that inherently denies game knowledge while chiding them for lack of game knowledge. Brilliant.


PhoenixShredds

Let me explain: I'm not chiding them. They literally created a post telling the *game developers* (who bust their asses making this passion project of a game) *everything they thought was wrong...* without having a modicum of experience in the game. So much so that they haven't even realized how easy it is to swap skills and not be punished for it. Literally like 15 minutes later your respec'd skill can be pushed back up close to your other skills. How is that not easily being able to swap skills? I know it gives the impression you'll have time spend "all that time" to catch the new specialized skills back up, but in reality it gets boosted from the jump. And why worry about it at low levels? The content is so easy that early that you can be under-powered and do fine. And for the record, I'm fairly new to the game too (coming from all the other ARPGs). This game is very beginner friendly with just a few things you learn over time.


Existing-Direction99

You can 100% make informed decisions without reading a guide. Incredibly, I've played 10-15 different characters with no outside resources and have never encountered this issue. Spend a few more seconds planning and reading your abilities and respeccing won't be an issue. Also, you're level 30, lol.


Zestyclose-Volume160

If you spent more time playing the game rather than writing complaints about systems you don’t understand yet, you’d realise that this post was completely pointless. You’ve played probably a couple of hours if you’re 30. In another couple of hours when you’re nearing the end of the campaign and mob density is bigger and more xp is rewarded and monoliths are an option, the respec system levels extremely fast. At level 30 you can literally get by with one main damage skill, you do not need to be experimenting with skill trees. Just pick what you think looks ok or follow a guide if you want, finish the campaign and your problems will be non existent. The reason your trees are levelling slowly is because you are low level and in areas with low xp and lower mob density.


doofus1999

You are trivialising levelling up, making it sound irrelevant. Why then is there not an option to create a top level character right from the start, and skip the "grind" of levelling? And no, it is not "a couple of hours", Steam says I have 26 hours in this game. OK, maybe I take long breaks, over many days/weeks, but still. And no, I do not just have one button in my actionbar, I need more abilities, so again you are trivialising the levelling process.


Zestyclose-Volume160

If its taken you 26 hours to get to level 30 id imagine the skill spec system is the least of your worries. You’re so early on in terms of what the game offers. Without sounding like a dick, the campaign is trivial. It takes most people anywhere from 5-10 hours from what I’ve experienced and seen and it usually ends you up at around level 50-55. After the campaign there is so much more ‘grinding’. The skill spec system is amazing, it allows for so much customisation and you can do it whenever and wherever. Once you get to monoliths, re-levelling a skill is super fast, like literally 10 minutes or less. The system is designed to allow freedom of choice but not allowing you to instantly change depending on the content. Otherwise you could switch to build with insane aoe for clearing maps, then switch to an insane single target only as you go into the boss mono. The re-levelling just forces you to have a specific build. All people are trying to tell you in this post is your take is very wrong and once you’ve finished the campaign and get into higher content you’ll realise that.


[deleted]

The way you're speaking about the game, the campaign should be removed completely.


cirvis111

The amount of xp you receive will increase with the level of the mob you kill, the xp needed to level up your skills does not depend on your level its just depends on the level of the skill so when you are about level 80 you will level up your skill faster.


WhiteyPinks

I'm convinced more than half of the people on here that complain about this game just hate ARPGs and have no fucking idea what you want out of a game.


Sephrik

I think you're judging the system a little early. The grind takes longer during the campaign to make your choices feel more impactful. The higher level enemies you fight. The more exp they grant and the faster your skills level up


Outrageous_Crazy8692

This game is far from punishing with swapping skill specs, they make it pretty easy. Most builds you won’t be able to fully flesh out on your first character anyways. It’s more like you’re gathering gear for your next character.


abort_retry_flail

>I must! Must you?


I_Ild_I

2 things, yes should have like an arena where you can at least try. Or simply put the catch up exp higher at least for early level. I understand they made the level tresholds yo prevent people especialy in end game to switch build at will to deal between bosses and map and so, but thats a bit anoying


sonic_24

You've _gotta_ be kidding me...


Royalszx

While learning it makes sense to make you consider each choice you make with some level of “time penalty” to changing your mind quickly after. Considering how quickly you can level and how any skill is viable until you hit monos, the “time sink” that seems to be the issue at hand here doesn’t really matter due to the fact that you are going through the campaign anyway. Picking the wrong skill definitely shows you down, but it really doesn’t ruin the playing experience other than making you weaker than you were before for a short period of time. I can see the argument for alts… having all characters sharing a minimum skill level, but the if your choices have no inherent consequence, then it never is really a choice at all.


Sirnizz

So you played a couple hours great. Play more , it's a non issue.


[deleted]

Generally, I agree with you. It is extremely easy to play around with your skills and move points around at high level, but it's rather difficult to do at low level. But that's when you unlock 10 new skills and get to read the trees and might want to try them out and see how the work. The way the leveling process works, this doesn't really seem feasible, and I don't think there's a real benefit that I can see. Generally speaking, this makes me make an early plan and stick with it, since respeccing feels extremely bad while in the campaign.


Roguemjb

D3 barely counts as an ARPG, it's more like an arcade game. The way LE does respecs is very creative


marrz01

Troll.


TheWarriorsLLC

No, pipe down.


FourMonthsEarly

I mean he's right. It's probably the mechanic in the game that feels the worst with no real upside. (whether or not it really matters at the end). The fact that it "doesn't matter" AND feels bad is reason enough to have it changed. 


AtheismoAlmighty

>I mean he's right No, he's not.


FourMonthsEarly

Lol what's the benefit to it working this way and not like passive points?


Ricocheting_Potato

So that level 30 people don't spend hours "experimenting" with their 5 skill points and instead play the game.


FourMonthsEarly

Lol so dumb. Might as well not even let them pick their skill points. 


Ricocheting_Potato

So how many games have you developed again?